we wait for fire

Pentecost was last weekend, and it rolls in my mind ever since. The upper room where disciples huddled waiting. For what? I suppose they had no idea. Men, women, likely some children. Days before they ate with Jesus, and he tells them, Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised… They could not have known that the windows would shake, the flames would come, and the life of solitary religion would be gone in an instant as they are dunked, drenched and soaked in the fullness of divinity.

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My parents left a few days ago, and as a parting gift, my dad gave us 70 bulbs of tulips, daffodils, freesias and ranunculus. I have no gardening abilities, but it sounded easy enough. It hinges on one thing, though. The bulbs have to be planted by the end of May. This is the season. 

We bought it at the Tesselaar garden store, home of the famous Tulip Festival. The bins were almost all empty when we arrived, and the only bulbs remaining were in a few paper bags and burlap sacks in the warehouse. The time to plant bulbs is coming to an end, wait for much longer, the flowers will not grow.

Grandpa and his grandsons dug up pockets of earth in the ground Friday afternoon, and we buried bulbs, one at a time. Patches of future daffodils and tulips, all a mess of brown dirt.

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It is the cold ground of winter that the bulbs need to produce life. This must be one of those divine fingerprints on earth, God puts a piece of himself into the DNA of a flower.

Some things must die before they can truly live. Death gives way to life. In the losing of life, we find it. 

A perfect God man hangs on the cross and takes his last breath, descends into hell carrying the sins of the world on his back, is laid in a tomb. And then. He lives.

A bulb that looks like a forgotten, sick onion goes into the ground when it is cold and grey. The earth becomes its tomb. Or its womb? And somehow as it gets colder, life will grow. The roots will travel into the soil. Nourishment will flow in. The shoot, which is in the bulb before it ever goes into the ground, presses through the bulb and then the soil. With time, sunshine and water, brilliant flowers bloom.

Burying the bulbs in the ground felt like the holy work of faith, I think of the prayers I’ve buried for years in winter’s ground, the ones that remain unanswered, the ones that were a solid, No, and everything in between. I think of the Peter and James and Mary and John and every person waiting in that upper room wondering.

What are we waiting for? Will it be like Him? Will it be enough? He came back to life, but what about us? What about the life we must life now in Jerusalem, Judea, and the ends of the earth? How are we going to live it without You? 

But they waited on because they knew their need. The aching, pressing, all consuming need for the one who had pulled them out of the pit. The one who had hung on a cross. The one they had seen live again. 

If there is any marker for a life with God, this is the only one I know: Need. The confession of our lips is simple, We cannot do it without you, we cannot survive it without you, we are nothing without you. 

There is a wait yet for all of us. Maybe you are waiting with people around you, maybe you are waiting alone. But how you wait isn’t as important as whom you wait for.

He’s the flame in the bush, pillars of smoke and fire surrounding his people. He comes in the terrible and glorious golden ark. He draws near as a tiny baby, an ugly carpenter, a broken Saviour, a coming King, and He is coming for you. 

The wind will blow again through the walls of your life, and it will shake the unnecessary away. You will speak anew in a holy tongue. Your heart will burn for his desires. The roots will grow into the soil, the shoot will push through. Your flower will bloom again.

So we pray, O God, for rain, we ask you now for our food, and we wait for fire.